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terpret foreign policy objectives in order to design and choose 

 projects. The Department of State has also neither the funds nor 

 the capacity to initiate and manage worthwhile scientific programs 

 on its own. 



Interagency mechanisms are often used as a way to plan such 

 mixed-purpose programs or to secure funds for them from regular 

 budgets, but that is a cumbersome mechanism at best; it necessari- 

 ly can be used sparingly only for programs of overriding political 

 interest. It is not calculated to provide efficient program manage- 

 ment and oversight, and at times it may lead to rather improper or 

 inappropriate use of regular budget funds. 



In the accompanying material submitted to the task force, I dis- 

 cuss some pros and cons of various other solutions to this problem 

 of how to plan, fund, choose and implement cooperative programs 

 with mixed political and scientific motives, ideas for approaches 

 such as appropriating funds to the State Department or allowing 

 line-item budgets in mission agencies or other possibilities. 



My preferred course, one attempted during the Carter adminis- 

 tration in part for this purpose, was and still is the creation of a 

 new agency expressly for international cooperation in science and 

 technology that would be able to contribute to development as well 

 as political objectives. 



That proposal, known as the Institute for Scientific and Techno- 

 logical Cooperation, you may remember, was authorized but not 

 funded by the Congress. I assume it is not a live option for some 

 time to come. 



Barring that, it seems to me that for the bulk of international 

 science and technology activities justified in part on foreign policy 

 grounds, it is the resources of the mission agencies themselves, 

 whether in an international budget or as part of regular programs, 

 that will have to be relied upon. The other choices are simply not 

 commensurate with the nature and scale of the overall objective. 



This conclusion that the bulk of the resources must come from 

 the agencies, however, requires coming to grips with the difficulties 

 associated with that route. If these are not dealt with, it is unreal- 

 istic to expect any administration or any Congress to approve. 



Primarily, these difficulties have to do with evaluation and 

 choice when a foreign policy motivation is involved. Who is respon- 

 sible and/or qualified to represent the foreign policy interest? How 

 should the project be compared with scientific evaluations, or how 

 should the foreign policy evaluations be compared? 



How can activities with different countries, different fields, dif- 

 ferent agencies, be compared across them? What can provide the 

 discipline that is required to force hard choices rather than simply 

 to approve everything because everything is good? How objective 

 can foreign policy criteria be in any case? 



I will skip over the particular suggestion I make here in the tes- 

 timony in the interest of time and just say that whatever the 

 mechanism that could be used for managing agency budgets for 

 international cooperation, that will not be enough. 



The need for planning flexibility, especially for broad programs 

 of cooperation of high political value and White House interest, 

 such as with China and the Soviet Union, and the need for initial 

 funds to define and develop projects dictate a requirement for some 



